This photo is also a symbol of the Great Patriotic War!

It depicts Aleksey Gordeevich Eremenko, junior political instructor of the 220th Infantry Regiment of the 4th Infantry Division of the 18th Army.

He replaced the wounded company commander and died, raising the fighters in a counterattack. According to a more common version, a few moments before his death, he was captured in a photo that later became known as the “Combat”, according to another, he died a little later, but in a similar situation.

The photo was taken on July 12, 1942, near the village of Good between the Lugan and Lozovaya rivers, in the area where the 220th Infantry Regiment of the 4th Infantry Division held the defense. The battle was terrible, out of more than three hundred people, only 72 survived, but the soldiers survived and did not allow the Germans to advance.
An eyewitness, Alexander Matveyevich Makarov, spoke about those events:
“The Nazis rushed into attack after attack. There were many killed and wounded. Our greatly depleted regiment was already repulsing the tenth or eleventh attack. The Nazis climbed right through to Voroshilovgrad (Lugansk), which was about thirty kilometers away. By the end of the day, the company commander was wounded. After a fierce bombing, with the support of tanks and artillery, the Nazis launched another attack. And then, rising to his full height, with the words: “Follow me! For the Motherland! Forward! ”, Yeremenko dragged the company along towards the chains of the Nazis. The political instructor died, but the attack was repulsed.”

Ivan Alekseevich Eremenko, son of A.G. Eremenko

I was always surprised by the caption that said that the photo was a battalion commander. After all, it is clearly visible that he has only one head over heels, which in any case indicates that this is a junior officer.
The shooting time is the summer of 1942, it speaks of heavy fighting, serious losses caused by the Germans' desire to "saddle" the Volga. Of course, then there was a time when they became battalion commanders and regimental commanders early, only they remained in the ranks for a very short period of time! The slogan of that period was - to detain the Nazis even for a day, even for an hour! Every destroyed enemy tank was a victory!

And here, in the photo, such an impulse - it is clearly visible in the photo - this person cannot be stopped!

This junior political officer, who became a battalion commander by chance, has made his step into immortality! Eternal glory to him!

Alexei Gordeevich Eremenko. photo history

Alexey Eremenko was born on March 31, 1906 in the village of Tersyanka, Yekaterinoslav province. Due to the fact that there were many children in the family, Alexei had to go to work at the age of 14. He first worked for railway and later at the factory. There he helped his parents. Aleksey Eremenko was Ukrainian by nationality. At that time, the first collective farms began to be created in the Zaporozhye region. According to some reports, the first collective farm was named "Vanguard", according to other sources, it was named after Krasin. At that moment, Alexey Eremenko was the head of the Komsomol cell. When he grew up, it was impossible not to notice that the young man had a natural gift to lead groups of people. Thanks to this fact, Aleksey Eremenko was appointed brigadier, later - party organizer, and at the end of his career - chairman of the collective farm. Absolutely everyone was satisfied with Eremenko's work.

Junior political instructor

Alexey Eremenko was a worthy person. At the beginning of the war, he had a reservation for conscription, which was associated with work on a collective farm. Despite this, he could not sit quietly at home while his brothers and friends were at war. Therefore, the young man volunteered to join the ranks of the Red Army as a commissar. In the army, the man received the rank of junior political instructor.

A political instructor in the USSR was a person who was a representative of the state or the ruling party. Junior political instructor Alexei Gordeevich Eremenko was supposed to oversee the command and personnel. His duties also included political, educational and educational work with the team. Political instructor Aleksey Eremenko fought for the 247th Rifle Division. Later, he ended up in the 220th Infantry Regiment of the 4th Infantry Division.

The death of the legendary political instructor

In the summer of 1942, as a result of fierce battles with the enemy, political instructor Alexei Eremenko died. There are many versions of the death of Alexei. One of them says that he gathered all the remaining soldiers around him and led them on the offensive against the German occupiers. Another version says that he was killed at the moment when he replaced the early company commander, Lieutenant Petrenko.

Aleksey Eremenko was buried in Ukraine, in the Lugansk region, in the village of Good in July 1942.

As you know, Alexei Gordeevich was captured in the famous photograph called "Combat", although in fact he was not the battalion commander. The photo was taken by Max Alpert. He made it while in the trenches, before the start of the very battle when Alexei Eremenko died. The photo became very famous, and Alexei became one of the symbols of victory.

Max Alper took the legendary photo at the moment when Alexei was raising soldiers into battle, so he turned out to be very courageous and courageous in the photo, and the image of a soldier straightening up to his full height, calling for an attack, conveys to the viewer the spirit of war and fierce battles. Later, Max Alpert sat in a trench and dealt with his equipment. At that moment, the soldiers were running around and shouting that they had killed the battalion commander. Then the young photographer Max thought that we were talking about Alexei Eremenko. For this reason, he called the photo - "Combat". However, this is an erroneous name, but as it happened during the war, it was decided that nothing should be changed. Alpert thought he had damaged the film and wanted to throw it away, but at the last moment he changed his mind about doing it. If the photographer had not changed his mind, then, most likely, now there would not be so many monuments, photographs and posters dedicated to Alexei Gordeevich.

Who is in the photo?

However, everything was not so simple. It was not immediately possible to determine who is depicted in the photo. Only in 2005, thanks to the employees of the newspaper "Komsomolskaya Pravda" with the support of the youth organization from Lugansk "Molodogvardeets", it was possible to find the relatives of Alexei Gordeevich. In 1974, Alexei's wife wrote letters asking to find the photographer, but there was no response to them. This is due to the fact that she was not alone in writing letters to the management: many stated that it was their relative in the photo. Therefore, it was not possible to establish the identity of the soldier for a long time.

Activists of the youth movement and journalists of Komsomolskaya Pravda managed to find a letter that was delivered to his wife after the death of Alexei Gordeevich. It indicated that her husband Alexei Gordeevich Eremenko was missing. Every second family received such letters during the war. One was attached to it. unusual photo, which later became one of the main symbols of the Great Patriotic War. Thanks to this letter, written to the wife of Alexei Gordeevich, it was possible to establish the identity of the person depicted in the photograph.

Commemorative coins

One photo was not enough. Already in our days, Alexei Gordeevich was depicted on some commemorative coins that are dedicated to the Great Patriotic war. Among them are the five-ruble coin “The Commander Raises the Soldiers to Attack”, which is included in the “50 Years of Victory” set, issued in 1995, as well as 10 rubles called “55 Years of Victory”, issued in 2000.

Collectors are the only ones who call the coin “Politruk” and not “Combat”. The photo of Aleksey Gordeevich inspired the Ukrainian sculptor to create a monument to the hero of the Great Patriotic War. Work on the monument took more than ten years. Thus, thanks to the efforts of the inhabitants of the Lugansk region, a monument 11 meters high was erected. Below it you can see a table with the inscription: "In honor of the heroic deed of political workers of the Soviet Army in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945."

70 years ago, on July 12, 1942, the junior political instructor of the 220th Infantry Regiment of the 4th Infantry Division of the 18th Army Alexei Eremenko died a hero's death. The political instructor was killed replacing the wounded company commander Senior Lieutenant Petrenko.

The moment when Eremenko raises the fighters in a counterattack is captured in the famous photograph of the famous Soviet photographer Max Alpert "Combat". This was Eremenko's last counterattack - successful, but he died in the same battle ... The photojournalist was on the battlefield near the village of Good between the Lugan and Lozovaya rivers, in a trench a little ahead of the defense line. He saw the commander rise and immediately photographed him. At the same moment, a fragment shattered the lens of the camera. The correspondent considered that the film had died and the frame was irretrievably lost. Soon he heard how the chain was transmitted: "The battalion commander was killed." The name and position of the commander remained unknown to the author, but what he heard later gave a reason to call the picture that way.

Later it turned out that the film was intact and the frame with the battalion commander too. The photograph was published in front-line newspapers in 1942. But when shoulder straps were introduced in the army, they did not print a picture of an officer with the old insignia. So this frame lay in the personal archive of Max Alpert for 23 years, until it got to a photo exhibition dedicated to the 20th anniversary of the Great Victory, and was not published in the Pravda newspaper.

The author has received many letters from the most different people who recognized their relative in the commander. However, only one claim was confirmed. Ivan Eremenko, the son of the deceased political officer, recognized his father as soon as he saw the photo in Pravda.

“Already my heart sank,” Ivan told the weekly “2000”. - Showed the picture to the older sisters Nina and Shura. They also recognized their father. The hero's wife also "looked and immediately wept - she found out." “I then worked as a deputy director of the plant,” the son continues, “I wrote a letter to Moscow, to Pravda, asking me to tell where this photograph appeared in the newspaper. I receive a letter from the editors - it contains the address of the author of the picture, Max Vladimirovich Alpert.

Then there was a personal meeting with a photographer, to whom Ivan gave 10 pre-war photographs of his father. The examination was carried out by specialists from the KGB Decryption Institute of the USSR, the All-Union Scientific Research Institute of Forensic Medical Examination of the USSR Ministry of Justice. The military writer Sergei Sergeevich Smirnov, as well as the Ministry of Defense, helped a lot. A forensic portrait examination was also carried out. It took the experts a long time to say with 100% certainty: yes, this is political instructor Eremenko.

It would seem that the truth has been established. It is also confirmed by eyewitnesses, for example, a former soldier of the medical platoon of the 220th regiment, later major political worker Alexander Matveyevich Makarov, who told the journal Science and Life in 1987: “The Nazis frantically rushed attack after attack. There were many killed and wounded. Our greatly depleted regiment was already repulsing the tenth or eleventh attack. The Nazis climbed right through to Voroshilovgrad, to which there were about thirty kilometers. By the end of the day, the company commander Senior Lieutenant Petrenko was wounded. After a fierce bombing, with the support of tanks and artillery, the Nazis launched another attack. And then, rising to his full height, with the words: “Follow me! For the Motherland! Forward! ”, Eremenko dragged the company along towards the chains of the Nazis. The attack was repulsed, but the political instructor died.”

And a veteran of the 285th division, reserve lieutenant colonel Vasily Sevastyanovich Berezubchak later told the weekly "2000" the following: "For eight months our division stood on the defensive, covering the Voroshilovgrad direction. Then, on the orders of General Grechko, she moved to a new line, taking up defense near the village of Good. Here a heated battle broke out, during which the political instructor Eremenko died. I find it hard to believe that the photo was taken elsewhere, during another fight. Because Eremenko was killed during the counterattack. However, in that battle there was no correspondent nearby ... And it was on the morning of July 12th. Heavy artillery fire fell upon us. We beat off the first attack. But during the second, the right flank of the division trembled. The soldiers began to withdraw. We were deaf, blind, many of us bled from our ears - our eardrums burst! I received an order from the divisional commander to restore the situation, to stop the soldiers, because the situation was critical. He ran towards the retreating ones. And then I saw Eremenko. He also ran across the fighters. Stop! Stop! he shouted. We lay down. They gathered people around them. We were few, a handful. But Eremenko decided to counterattack to restore the situation. This is not forgotten. He stood up to his full height, screamed, rushed to the attack. We burst into the trenches, hand-to-hand ensued. They fought with rifle butts and bayonets. The Nazis faltered and ran. Soon I saw Eremenko in one of the trenches. He was falling slowly. I ran to him and realized that the junior political instructor no longer needed help ... "

And yet, in the new century, there were those who doubted the truth of those events, the authenticity of the photograph, the feat of the hero. There were versions that the picture was staged, taken at the exercises before the war, that the political instructor was not a political instructor at all, that he did not have the same number of cubes in his buttonhole, that the political instructor could not be a commander at all. The photo is examined under a magnifying glass, improperly dressed soldiers are noticed in the background, and the initial entry in the documents of the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, according to which A. G. Eremenko was listed as missing back in January 1942 (facts when soldiers, even after the funeral, they returned home alive, it seems like it does not exist for the critics of "Combat").

And of course, lovers of “historical truth”, which for some reason is always based on exposing a certain “lie”, despite the fact that the veracity of this “lie” has been proven by numerous documents, there is already a disgust for “communist propaganda” that has already set the teeth on edge. And again, it would seem, what is so propagandistic in Alpert's photo? The victorious Russian soldier (however, Eremenko is Ukrainian, but still Russian ...), simple, not polished, no hammers and sickles are visible, there is not a word or a hint about Stalin, he raises soldiers to attack ... How many such heroes there were - survivors in that war and the dead! And the picture really turned out wonderful from all points of view. No wonder the whole world admired him. Such luck is rare for a photojournalist. He became a symbol of military courage, valor and courage of all defenders of the Fatherland. He stepped across the planet, as if having renounced his creator, stood on a par with such creations as the poster "The Motherland is Calling!" and a monument to a Soviet soldier in Treptow Park.

So why such disbelief in the real existence of both the feat and the hero? Everything becomes clear when you find out the biography of Alexei Eremenko: he is a communist, from a simple working family with many children, who had to start his career early. At the time of the creation of the first collective farm in the Zaporozhye region (it then bore the name of Krasin), Alexei was the head of the Komsomol cell. Because of his ability to manage people, he was first appointed a foreman, then a party organizer, and then the chairman of a collective farm.

The son of Alexei Eremenko says: “He was a famous person in the region. Three times he represented the farm at VDNKh ... He spoke at the All-Union Conference of Workers Agriculture. He was the first to illuminate the villages in the region. The last time Ivan Eremenko saw his father was in September 1941: “It was during the evacuation, in a forest belt near the city. My father was already in the military, although he had a reservation. His statement has been preserved in the archives of the military enlistment office: “Please send me to the front. I consider myself quite healthy to beat the fascist reptile ... "

Eremenko just turned out to be a real communist. This is the one who led the collective farm before the war, and in battle took over the leadership of the attack. Being a communist in those days meant having the only privilege - to be ahead and not expect any awards and honors. He didn't wait, that's why "Combat" was unknown for so long. The only award of Alexei Eremenko is the Order of the Badge of Honor, which he was awarded before the war for the hard work of the chairman of an advanced collective farm. The groom of the same collective farm received the Order of Lenin - Eremenko's farm annually sent 20 trotters to the Red Army.

And political instructor Eremenko, the famous “Combat”, has no military awards ... In the 70s, they petitioned Brezhnev to reward the hero posthumously. Brezhnev, having learned, shed a tear ... But it did not come to the execution of documents. Already in independent Ukraine, the son of Eremenko appealed to the president of the country, but received an answer from the Administration: they don’t reward for past merits ...

And yet he was! Unknown "Combat", which gained a name. The photograph itself speaks of the ordinariness and majesty of his feat. Everyone knows "Combat", many now know that the photo shows Alexei Eremenko. Let's remember that he was a communist.

Who hasn't seen this photo! From the moment a picture of a war correspondent was published in Pravda Max Alpert, it was reprinted by dozens of publications in the USSR and hundreds around the world. So the unnamed "Combat", raising the Red Army to attack, became one of the symbols of the Great Victory. But the real name of the hero, junior political officer Alexey Eremenko, became known only decades after the feat.

Go on the attack...

At one time I was lucky to talk with the Hero Soviet Union Vladimir Karpov. So, answering the question of what was the most difficult thing in the war, Vladimir Vasilievich admitted that the most difficult thing was to force yourself to get off the ground in order to go on the attack, when you know that the very first bullet of the enemy can be yours. But this is exactly what happened to Alexei Eremenko, junior political officer of the 220th regiment of the 4th rifle division. In the summer of 1942, their company stood to the death at the turn near the village of Good in the Slavyanoserbsky district of the Voroshilovgrad (now Luhansk) region.

Having repulsed thirteen (!) attacks of the Nazis, the unit was already preparing for the worst. After all, the company commander, senior lieutenant Petrenko, seriously injured. And who will command the remaining fighters? And then Alexei Gordeevich took his place. Gathering the surviving Red Army soldiers around him and waiting for the end of the next artillery preparation of the enemy, Eremenko got up from the trench and dragged his subordinates behind him into a counterattack, commanding: “Forward! For the Motherland!

It was this moment that was captured by the front-line military journalist Max Alpert, who was filming for TASS. The company, or what was left of it, rushed at the enemy, engaging him in a bayonet fight. But that was later. And just a moment after the photographer took the picture, the junior political officer was overtaken by a fascist bullet. The camera itself was shattered by a piece of shrapnel. That is why Alpert did not write down the names of the hero. And while he was unsuccessfully trying to figure out whether it was possible to fix the camera, it flashed through the trenches: “The battalion commander was killed!” Okay, the journalist decided, if the film still didn’t tear, the picture could be titled “Combat”.

Who are you, hero?

Years have passed. Eremenko's relatives only knew that on the eve of his death, he took part in the defense of Debaltseve for 8 months. And then they received the news that Alexei Gordeevich was missing. But he was buried after the battle, even in a mass grave. However, not all fighters knew the young political officer by sight, who had just stepped in to replace the commander. Yes, and there were fighters alive - nothing at all. Therefore, Eremenko was never identified.

This was possible only 20 years after the Victory, when a commemorative photo album was released by the Pravda publishing house, on the cover of which the picture was placed. “As soon as I saw the photo, I immediately realized that this was my father,” the hero’s son later recalled, Ivan, himself a former military man, a retired colonel. - True, it was embarrassing that “Combat” was signed below. Although the family knew for sure that he was a junior political instructor. Both my sister and the rest of our relatives - everyone recognized our father in the photo. To make sure that I was not mistaken, I showed the photo album to my mother. She, as she saw the picture, began to cry, lamenting: “This is my Alyosha!”.

Repeated appeals of the family to various authorities did not clarify the situation. After all, hundreds of letters came to the editorial office, each of which claimed that it was their father, son, brother or uncle depicted in the picture. In the mid-2000s, for example, information even flashed on the Internet that 90-year-old front-line soldier Pavel Fedorovich Petrov was living his life in Mariupol, who, in his own opinion, is the very “Combat”. And Yevdokia, Eremenko's widow, was helped by the fact that in 1974, along with a copy of the funeral, she enclosed his pre-war photographs in a letter. The examination carried out established their identity with the "combat". So the country learned the name of the hero.

Secretary General's promise

Say what you like, but in Soviet times there were quite a few real party leaders. It was these people who rightly decided that the person who became the symbol of the Victory should definitely be awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. This is exactly what the first persons of the respective party regional committees of Luhansk region (where Aleksey Gordeevich died) and Zaporozhye (where he was born in the village of Tersyanka) did. By that time, a book about Eremenko had already been published. Having waited for the next anniversary of "dear Leonid Ilyich", the first secretaries, meeting with him in the Kremlin, presented a volume Brezhnev. And in words they said that we are talking about the very "Combat". And it would be nice to assign him a Hero posthumously.

“It wouldn’t be bad, it wouldn’t be bad ... Especially since he is really a real hero,” the Secretary General allegedly replied. But the matter of rewarding has not moved forward. But Leonid Ilyich during the war, in the rank of brigade commissar, led the political department of the same 18th army, which included, respectively, the 4th division and the 220th rifle regiment.

One can, of course, assume that it was not the Dnepropetrovsk party officials, whom Brezhnev welcomed, who put in a good word for the hero. But Ilyich, sentimental in old age, still treated his brother-soldiers favorably. Most likely, he simply forgot about this conversation.

The fight goes on

And in our days, Alexei Gordeevich Eremenko does not manage to assign, albeit posthumously, the title of Hero. The Cossacks from public organizations"Slavic Guard" and St. George's Union of Youth, the then head of the regional administration Boris Petrov. But so far, the initiators receive only replies, or their appeals remain completely unanswered. According to the still alive Ivan Eremenko, sent a request Viktor Yushchenko and under the governorship Evgenia Chervonenko. What that appeal could lead to, it is better not to remember. After all, even the name of the hero seemed to be deliberately distorted by writing in the document: "Alexey Gordeevich Efremov." And could the person who awarded the title of Hero of Ukraine sign this petition? Bandera?

In a word, so far nothing has been achieved with this noble cause. What can I say: they love today in Ukraine, and in the Baltic States and Eastern Europe, to fight with veterans, with soldiers lying in mass graves, and with monuments erected in their honor. So is it really impossible to pay tribute to the legendary hero in our country, whose symbol of victory in the hardest struggle against fascism he became? This would be the highest justice. And it would sound proud and beautiful: Hero of Russia Alexei Gordeevich Eremenko!

Eremenko Alexey Gordeevich
Born: 18 (31) March 1906
Died: July 12, 1942 (aged 36)

Biography

Alexey Gordeevich Eremenko (March 18, 1906 - July 12, 1942) - junior political instructor of the 220th Infantry Regiment of the 4th Infantry Division of the 18th Army. He replaced the wounded company commander and died, raising the fighters in a counterattack. According to a more common version, a few moments before his death, he was captured in a photo that later became known as the “Combat”, according to another, he died a little later, but in a similar situation.

He was born on March 18 (31), 1906 in the village of Tersyanka, Yekaterinoslav province, in a large family, which is why at the age of 14 he began working on the railway, then at the factory, helping his parents. By nationality - Ukrainian. At the time of the creation of the first collective farm in the Zaporozhye region (it was then called "Avangard", according to other sources - the collective farm named after Krasin), Alexei was the head of the Komsomol cell. Because of his ability to manage people, he was first appointed a foreman, then a party organizer, and then the chairman of the collective farm mentioned.

Despite the reservation from the draft, at the beginning of World War II, he voluntarily joined the ranks of the Red Army as a commissar. He fought in the 247th Infantry Division, then in the 220th Infantry Regiment of the 4th Infantry Division [Note 1].

Doom

According to one version, he died in the summer of 1942 near the village of Good: during the repulse of the attack of German units, he gathered around him a group of retreating soldiers and raised them in a counterattack on the enemy's trenches, in which he died during hand-to-hand combat. However, a photograph could not be taken at that moment, as there were no photojournalists nearby.

According to the second version, he was killed replacing the wounded company commander Senior Lieutenant Petrenko. The picture was taken at the time of the counterattack, but the camera was damaged, and Max Alpert was forced to lie down in the trench; while he was assessing the damage caused to the camera (at that time he believed that the pictures were lost and the film was damaged or exposed), he heard a message transmitted through a chain of people: “The battalion commander was killed!”. Considering that this is the same commander, he subsequently titled the photograph "Combat".

He was buried in a mass grave in the village of Good in the Slavyanoserbsky district of the Luhansk region (Ukraine) in July 1942.

In history

Max Alpert long time I could not establish what kind of person was captured in the photograph - many recognized their relatives in it, one even in 2005 stated that it was he who was captured in it. To identify the commander, the journalists of Komsomolskaya Pravda, together with activists of the Luhansk regional youth organization Molodogvardiets (Russian: Molodogvardeets), organized a search for the relatives of the person from the photograph, and an appeal was published to readers from the pages of the newspaper. In 1974, Eremenko's relatives (mother and son) wrote to the editorial office with a request to find M. Alpert, since, in their opinion, it was their husband and father that was captured in the photograph. At first, this message caused skepticism, given the many previous such statements, and because of the funeral received by Alexei Gordeevich’s wife Evdokia Eremenko in 1943, attached to the letter: “We inform you that your husband is junior political instructor Alexei Gordeevich Eremenko, born in 1906, January 14 1942 went missing" [Note 4]. But, since photographs were also attached to the letter, this made it possible to conduct an examination, which confirmed with a high degree of certainty that the photo of Alpert and the photographs provided by Eremenko's wife depict one person.

The photograph "Combat" has become one of the symbols of the Great Patriotic War.

In numismatics

The photo of Max Alpert served as the basis for several commemorative coins dedicated to the anniversary of the victory in the Great Patriotic War. These include:

5 rubles "The commander raises the soldiers to attack" from the set "50 Years of Victory", 1995, the Russian Federation.

10 rubles "55 Years of Victory", 2000, Russian Federation. Curiously, collectors call the coin "Politruk", despite the fact that the photo is erroneously called "Combat".

Monument at the place of death

The picture served as a source of inspiration for the Luhansk sculptor Ivan Mikhailovich Chumak [Note 5], and he began to work independently on the monument to the hero of the photograph, which took him about ten years. Subsequently, with the participation of the entire region, an eleven-meter monument, cast in bronze by masters of the Ukrainian Specialized Scientific and Production Administration for Restoration Works, was installed near the alleged battlefield where A. G. Eremenko died, on an elevated location of the observation post. The mound where the monument is erected is decorated with twenty-nine granite slabs, which were specially made for this purpose in the quarries of the Zhytomyr region. At the foot of the monument is a marble slab with the inscription: "In honor of the heroic feat of political workers of the Soviet Army in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945." On July 12, 2012, 70 years after the death of Eremenko, a reconstruction of the battle was carried out on the mound at the foot of the monument.

Who hasn't seen this photo! From the moment Pravda published a snapshot of war correspondent Max Alpert, it has been reprinted by dozens of publications in the USSR and hundreds around the world. So the unnamed "Combat", raising the Red Army to attack, became one of the symbols of the Great Victory. But the real name of the hero, junior political officer Alexei Eremenko, became known only decades after the feat.

Go on the attack...

At one time I was lucky to talk with the Hero of the Soviet Union Vladimir Karpov. So, answering the question of what was the most difficult thing in the war, Vladimir Vasilievich admitted that the most difficult thing was to force yourself to get off the ground in order to go on the attack, when you know that the very first bullet of the enemy can be yours. But this is exactly what happened to Alexei Eremenko, junior political officer of the 220th regiment of the 4th rifle division. In the summer of 1942, their company stood to the death at the turn near the village of Good in the Slavyanoserbsky district of the Voroshilovgrad (now Luhansk) region.

Having repulsed thirteen (!) attacks of the Nazis, the unit was already preparing for the worst. After all, the company commander, senior lieutenant Petrenko, was seriously wounded. And who will command the remaining fighters? And then Alexei Gordeevich took his place. Gathering the surviving Red Army soldiers around him and waiting for the end of the next artillery preparation of the enemy, Eremenko got up from the trench and dragged his subordinates behind him into a counterattack, commanding: “Forward! For the Motherland!

It was this moment that was captured by the front-line military journalist Max Alpert, who was filming for TASS. The company, or what was left of it, rushed at the enemy, engaging him in a bayonet fight. But that was later. And just a moment after the photographer took the picture, the junior political officer was overtaken by a fascist bullet. The camera itself was shattered by a piece of shrapnel. That is why Alpert did not write down the names of the hero. And while he was unsuccessfully trying to figure out whether it was possible to fix the camera, it flashed through the trenches: “The battalion commander was killed!” Okay, the journalist decided, if the film still didn’t tear, the picture could be titled “Combat”.

Who are you, hero?

Years have passed. Eremenko's relatives only knew that on the eve of his death, he took part in the defense of Debaltseve for 8 months. And then they received the news that Alexei Gordeevich was missing. But he was buried after the battle, even in a mass grave. However, not all fighters knew the young political officer by sight, who had just stepped in to replace the commander. Yes, and there were fighters alive - nothing at all. Therefore, Eremenko was never identified.

This was possible only 20 years after the Victory, when a commemorative photo album was released by the Pravda publishing house, on the cover of which the picture was placed. “As soon as I saw the photo, I immediately realized that this was my father,” the son of the hero later recalled, Ivan, himself a former military man, a retired colonel. - True, it was embarrassing that “Combat” was signed below. Although the family knew for sure that he was a junior political instructor. Both my sister and the rest of our relatives - everyone recognized our father in the photo. To make sure that I was not mistaken, I showed the photo album to my mother. She, as she saw the picture, began to cry, lamenting: “This is my Alyosha!”.

Repeated appeals of the family to various authorities did not clarify the situation. After all, hundreds of letters came to the editorial office, each of which claimed that it was their father, son, brother or uncle depicted in the picture. In the mid-2000s, for example, information even flashed on the Internet that 90-year-old front-line soldier Pavel Fedorovich Petrov, who, in his own opinion, is the same "Combat", is living his life in Mariupol. And Yevdokia, Eremenko's widow, was helped by the fact that in 1974, along with a copy of the funeral, she enclosed his pre-war photographs in a letter. The examination carried out established their identity with the "combat". So the country learned the name of the hero.

Secretary General's promise

Say what you like, but in Soviet times there were quite a few real party leaders. It was these people who rightly decided that the person who became the symbol of the Victory should definitely be awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. This is exactly what the first persons of the respective party regional committees of Luhansk region (where Aleksey Gordeevich died) and Zaporozhye (where he was born in the village of Tersyanka) did. By that time, a book about Eremenko had already been published. Having waited for the next anniversary of "dear Leonid Ilyich", the first secretaries, meeting with him in the Kremlin, presented the volume to Brezhnev. And in words they said that we are talking about the same “Combat”. And it would be nice to assign him a Hero posthumously.

"It would be nice, not bad ... Especially since he is really a real hero," the Secretary General allegedly replied. But the matter of rewarding has not moved forward. But Leonid Ilyich during the war, in the rank of brigade commissar, led the political department of the same 18th army, which included, respectively, the 4th division and the 220th rifle regiment.

One can, of course, assume that it was not the Dnepropetrovsk party officials, whom Brezhnev welcomed, who put in a good word for the hero. But Ilyich, sentimental in old age, still treated his brother-soldiers favorably. Most likely, he simply forgot about this conversation.

Alexei Gordeevich Efremov. And could the person who awarded the title of Ukraine to Bandera sign this petition?

In a word, so far nothing has been achieved with this noble cause. What can I say: they love today in Ukraine, and in the Baltic States and Eastern Europe, to fight with veterans, with soldiers lying in mass graves, and with monuments erected in their honor. So is it really impossible to pay tribute to the legendary hero in our country, whose symbol of victory in the hardest struggle against fascism he became? This would be the highest justice. And it would sound proud and beautiful: Hero of Russia Alexei Gordeevich Eremenko!